do i look like a beatle?

Clockwise from top left: Paul, Ringo, John, George

On Friday, I had coffee with Dennis. He is a faithful member of the church and attends both Wednesday and Sunday. He rides the bus, and is often the first picked up and the last to be dropped off back home. He has told me on more than one occasion, usually after the bus has broken down and not been able to pick him up for church, “I live for Wednesday and Sunday, you know.”

I do know this about him. He loves to light the candles for service and he especially loves to be called on to give people wine during communion. He loves the people, he loves the routine, he loves to talk about God.

He also loves the victors the church gets every year. And his tradition is to have coffee once a month or so with me.

So on Friday, we sat at a coffee shop and, repeatedly, he called me “the beatle.” He has commented on my haircut before, saying I looked like how The Beatles used to keep their hair.

It really struck me as funny and I laughed heartily every time he said it, which doesn’t help of course.  I think it was that he called me “the” beatle.

do i look like i'm about to revolutionize rock and roll?

 

 

Really? What do you think? Which Beatle do I look like?

 

P.S – Check out this sermon by seminary professor David Lose and the reference to a song by The Beatles – it’s great! http://www.luthersem.edu/chapel/archives.asp?chapel_id=9509

Brian Davis weighed in on if he thought I looked like a Beatle and voted John below:

 

i look a little too intense for these cool chaps

all you need is love

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been preaching a lot.  Weekly even.  And what I’ve been finding is that, no matter the text, I end up preaching about love.  About God’s love for us that never ends.  Ever.  It’s exciting and exhausting and a privilege to put words to that love in a sermon.

Recenlty, I was a participant in a Bible study where I was asked to take a minute and think of the people who loved me and that I loved.  (How often are you asked to do that?)  I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes and was flooded with names and faces of people in my life that I love and who love me.  I thought “we only get a minute?”  Then, when our time ended, the leader had a little hand-held device that cut out heart shapes from paper.  She told us that we were to cut out a heart from bright pink paper for each person we had thought about.

We each sort of reacted to that instruction with varying degrees of “oh!”  and I wondered aloud if there would be enough paper for the 5 of us to complete this exercise.  A woman sitting next to me said “That’s why I came tonight.  I don’t have many people in my life that love me.  That was a long minute.”

I am still shocked to think of this and to write the words she bravely uttered to us.

I suddenly felt selfish.  As I had envisioned the amount of paper I would use and the handfuls of hearts I could clutch if I truly tried to replicate the amount of love I have in my life with paper, well, it felt gluttonous in light of this woman’s empty hands.

A wise pastor friend of mine, Tom, once said something like this to me during my seminary journey: “We’re engaged in studying matters of the heart.  We’ve got to be aware of our own hearts and to clearly communicate God’s love to people.”  

He didn’t limit this statement to preaching from a pulpit during a worship service.  But I know that it does no one any good for me to write sermons that are full of church jargon so I can pontificate in such a way that shuts people ears and does not speak clearly about God’s love.

Look at this delicious definition of the word pontificate: “express one’s opinion in a way considered annoyingly pompus and dogmatic.”

So consider me officially trying to get to the heart of the matter in a sermon in a clear and direct way.

Here ends the pontificating.  For now.